Is there a name for the literary device where the narrator relays an experience through hearsay? Like in Ozymandias: "I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—" You see this a lot in Gothic lit & Lovecraft.
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Replying to @ptychomancer
It’s a variation of a “frame narrative”. Not sure if there is a specific name for the relaying of a story someone else told to the narrator. I see it as an echo of how stories were shared through oral traditions.
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Replying to @maetl
Frame narrative is the right jumping off point, thanks. The connection to oral tradition is also real interesting.
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Replying to @ptychomancer
The most amazing one I ever saw was in an antiquarian provincial history book in NZ: “While travelling by train, I met an old Māori man who told me how the land we were moving across was once a vast primordial forest...”
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Replying to @maetl @ptychomancer
Plato's Symposium is the peak for me. It's told by a friend of Socrates, years after the fact, in the form of a story about how he just ran into another guy on the road and told him about the party, which he himself heard about years before from some guy who was actually there.
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@catvalente wrote a pair of books called the Orphan's Tales that does this Up To 11 and i wasn't really keeping notes but i'm pretty sure the narrative chain recurses
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It does!
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